[LAU] Laid to rest is Pro Tools LE"...

Renato rennabh at gmail.com
Fri Mar 4 14:41:03 UTC 2011


On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 09:07:58 -0500
Thomas Vecchione <seablaede at gmail.com> wrote:

> Answers inline below...
> 
> On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Kim Cascone <kim at anechoicmedia.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hello Kim,
> >>
> >> Yes I know that article, which is very biased I think, but I was
> >> referring to your article on CDM in which you state that for music
> >> production on Linux one only needs ALSA (or FFADO for FireWire)
> >> and JACK.
> >>
> >
> 
> I see - this is correct and true - until one encounters other legacy
> layers
> > which might present problems -- I have a vague memory of needing to
> > add a Jack<-->ALSA midi bridge for Yoshimi synth as well as some
> > sort of OSS ALSA mod for some other app to work - sorry but details
> > are fuzzy -
> >
> >
> Just look at the fun that is PulseAudio for many people these days.
> It is getting better but isn't there yet.
> 
> 
> > and also true is that one can use a distro that makes all this
> > invisible to the user and streamlines the work needed to set up a
> > workflow and get things customized but finding these other
> > (sometimes arcane) distros is not all that easy -- the low hanging
> > fruit is Ubuntu Studio which is rife with issues and no easier to
> > use really than installing Ubuntu and setting up your own workflow
> > with apps and utilities - which is what I have done because I
> > didn't want to switch to another distro i.e. staying with Ubuntu
> > was easier and didn't interrupt my busy work schedule etc etc
> >
> 
> And here is the big thing, touched on later as well with the
> crapplications comment.
> 
> Linux is competing against itself in this regards.
> 
> Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio are two of the most troublesome distros for
> audio in general.  If it isn't lack of proper configuration, it is
> lack of proper packages, very out of date packages, etc.  These also
> happen to be the best known and most publisized versions of Linux out
> there and like it or not, when people that aren't already involved or
> have researched Linux hear the word Linux, this is what they think
> of.  This is generally the first distribution someone tries, and
> their first thoughts are, "Well if this which is supposed to be the
> best of Linux can't do basic things like allow me to start Jack, the
> rest must suck".
> 
> I will repeat, Linux is competing against itself.  The sad thing is
> that Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio have larger crews behind them, but
> because their focus is so varied they aren't often tuned well for
> audio.  Maybe sometime it will get better, but until then, people are
> going to go with the terms they know(Ubuntu == TheBestOfLinux if not
> Ubuntu == Linux) and are ALWAYS going to walk away dissapointed
> because in order to do even basic things that even WINDOWS(Much less
> Mac) can do out of the box they have to 'hack the system'(Terminology
> courtesy of our tech media) just to get the basics working, much less
> the more advanced things like realtime preemption.
> 
> Until something can be done about that, there is only so much point in
> competing with even a now defunct product to be honest.
> 
>      Seablade
> 

Jack doesn't work out of the box on Ubuntu? From what I can remember it
did for me. Of course there was the usual period/frames/buffer tweaking
but that's unavoidable isn't it?

For me Ubuntu worked well for Audio except for one thing: keeping up to
date. Many linux audio apps are changing fast and comipiling often,
using checkinstall which didn't allways work, was hell. It's much
easier now with Arch.

cheers
renato


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